


Come to an end

by renegadeRoyalty



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-02
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:12:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renegadeRoyalty/pseuds/renegadeRoyalty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's all a part of the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come to an end

**Author's Note:**

> This was started in july and my internet went down a few days ago so i finished it (finally)
> 
> Crossposted to a writing tumblr blog.

Yoshiya has always believed in fairytales.

 

He had been a sickly, weak child, skin pale as paper, eyes purple, framed by dark circles around his eyes, smooth, thick hair desaturated, complimenting his sickly physique. Boney legs unable to hold his body on their own, lanky arms engulfed in metallic crutches. As far as his memory stretches, this white hospital room is all he sees, everything he knows. The outside, the behind of that door can break him; taint the white in nothing but damp, cold darkness. It’s too dangerous, too messy outside, he doesn’t even want to imagine himself there, in the filthy crowd, he’s safe in his white room, his company sculptures of painted glass, his ghostly reflection, his bed confines his sick body and his tired soul and he awaits death.

It starts scratching in the back of his head as he sleeps, at first. It’s a whisper, a haunting tenor that sometimes wakes him up, making him sit bolt upright, and he swears he heard someone yelling in his ear. He’s drenched in cold sweat and the outside has started blooming, the snow giving room to gentle lilies and tulips. He inhales heavily and exhales with just as much wasted effort, stars dancing before his eyes as he lets his torso fall on the white wave of safety and dreams. Breathing in again, he tells himself it was nothing more than a bad dream, a vivid hallucination. He finds no comfort in his own thoughts. It takes him a while to fall asleep that night.

The lilacs and the dandelions paint green hills with contrasting colors and the breeze has stopped numbing foolishly exposed extremities a while ago. The open window is a portal to outside as he reads a book. The wind attempts to flip pages, long fingers grip the shiny covers in a distressed matter, his mind is heavily in the world the words make, pages break. 

“Snow white and the seven dwarfs”

He likes snow white. She found her happiness, putting the fact she was as pale as paper, as pale as him aside. He sometimes dreams about what it would be like to wake up as her, charcoal hair framing pretty face, no darkness under or in his eyes, no drugs to heal diseased body, no illness to heal. He’d look in a silver mirror, his reflection never staring back at him. No him. Something hisses right behind his left ear and before he can turn around to find his foe of dreamland, the noise is gone. He feels relieved but also sad, like his heart is missing. Still no Yoshiya in the mirror. It reflects the walls, the window, the moon outside. His palms start to itch and he realizes his arms are nothing but bones and there is nothing to scratch. The pale skin is quickly fading from his body and it’s the worst feeling ever. Darkness, darkness everywhere and the breeze could blow him away. He closes his eyes, ordering himself to wake up. There’s a lot of willpower behind the decision and it’s enough to make his body twitch in the white bed. Right before he opens his eyes he hears a grunt of displeasure in his own head. It’s nothing more than an echo as his orbs cast at the dimmed light of the whiteness. His brow is covered in sheen of cold sweat and he can no longer sleep that night.

That afternoon, he doesn’t know a lot of things, what it’s like to feel summer rain on your skin, the weight of a pebble as he stands in an ocean; the lukewarm water up to his knees. He has forgotten all colors but white, and the amethyst of his tired eyes seems alienated from him, unnatural.  It’s not something to stress over, his presence is ephemeral, after all. 

There’s a sudden flash before his eyes and he leans on the crutch for balance. The whisper dances around him, words spoken too slowly to understand, too fast to hear. He isn’t afraid, his emotion is one of wonder and silent curiosity. He was always quiescent and that wasn’t about to change now.

The whisper leaves as suddenly as it comes, the world fading out before him as a single word echoes through his head. He isn’t conscious long enough to feel his fragile body hit the tiled, cold floor.

“Stop.”

He wakes up on his bed, his clock telling him it’s three hours later, not like he cares, he’s going nowhere, and his road is a constant downhill. His hair is messy, and he runs a pale hand through it, but it fixes nothing. He tries to remember how he got here, what happened prior, but all he can recall; “Stop”. Sighing, he reaches out to grab another book, this time “Rapunzel”, it’s a sad story with a happy, fairytale ending, yet he has read it enough times to stop his tears from scarring his cheeks. Sleep finds him before he reaches the climax of the story and he rests his tired head on the white pillow. This time, all he sees is black, with millions of little lights sprinkled everywhere, and he’s flying through the night sky. It’s just chilly enough to give his pale, skinny forearms goose bumps, but not cold enough to make him regret not conjuring himself a jacket prior to his gravity-defying journey. Stars make an euphonious, chime-like sound when his digits feel one under the fingertips and this is the best feeling ever. The stars get bigger and bigger and the white illuminates everything around him, either displaying a never ending black, or shining away to the next star. There’s a light approaching fast and he can’t dodge it even if he tries, he makes no effort doing so and the whitest white swallows him whole and suddenly he’s falling. The black has an end and it’s getting closer by the second. He smiles, or at least tries to cover up his fear as his forearms instinctively form a barrier before his face. It’s a matter of seconds before he reaches the bottom and he prepares himself for the inevitable hit that he knows will radiate throughout his entire being, down to his core and his marrow. There’s a swish of air beside him and the whisper yells a “Not yet!”

He wakes up, hair almost dripping with sweat and he’s thankful for the mid-spring breeze that enters silently through his window. He flips his pillow, and right before he falls asleep again, he hears a “Good night” in that pleasant growl that used to be a whisper. 

The doctor mouths soothing words the next morning, but his eyes are sad, due to his pale patient’s new, wind-induced fever. But Yoshiya knows his days are numbered. Nobody visits him anymore, his parents long given up, his friends long forgotten. He doesn’t mind. His reflection, and the whiteness and the books are enough for him, and if he tries hard enough, he can summon the haunting whisper. If he pushes it a little more, he can even hear the voice loud enough. Promising to do so tonight, when no one is watching, he smiles as the doctor lies to him that he’ll see valleys covered in lilies. Feigning excitement, he prepares himself for night.

This time it’s “Sleeping Beauty”. The story of the prettiest princess, condemned to an eternal slumber only due to jealousy, and she, too, gets her happy ending as her prince wakes her up with a kiss. Yoshiya has never felt a kiss and he wonders what it feels like. Would the kiss from his prince cure him, would he be able to see the valleys then? There is a clawing sensation in the back of his head and it’s here.

“You know that in the original equation, the fair princess was raped, right?”

He swats his hand in annoyance, he doesn’t like when his books are tainted.

“You little hectopascal, you calculated me here, don’t just divide me by a zero!”

The voice is now a bit louder but it’s been a while since anyone spoke to Yoshiya like that. It is no longer an empty echo in his head, nor a breeze of incoherent whispers around him, it evolved into a voice with a fully fixated source. Yoshiya smiles to himself “What’s your name?”

“Sho. Minamimoto Sho.”

The voice known as Sho always has hints of a smirk under toned but he likes it. He spends a good portion of the night talking to ‘Sho’ and before he knows it, his head rests on the cool whiteness. Sleep wraps around him like a cocoon sooner than he expected. His body is slowly but steadily becoming weaker and slumber is always welcome. That night, he dreams nothing, pitch black before his eyes. When he wakes up the next morning, he looks a little paler than last night, circles now a dark indigo, making his eyes look ghastly. What scares him is that he can no longer summon the voice as he pleases. He hasn’t felt this vulnerable in quite a while. Yoshiya spends that day in bed and he almost misses ‘Sho’, staring out the window into a cloudy day. The clouds are colorless and uninteresting just like his hair and he turns away from the window to look at the white wall. After a while he falls asleep again, in a lack of a better pastime. He sleeps all the way to next day and wakes up just in time to see the colors of dawn. He’s not sure, but he thinks he might like them.

The voice doesn’t show up again that week, or the next two.

It’s a stormy Friday night, and Yoshiya is reading again. He has no adoration for poetry or journalism, remaining faithful to fiction; tonight he grips a dog-eared copy of “The Little Mermaid”. Sacrificing her voice for legs, to win her prince over, she ventures in a completely unknown world and manages to get her prince and live her happy ending. He is a little bit jealous, but kindled by the happiness the end gives him.

“She dies. Heh, guess she factored more she could multiply.”

This time, the source is to his right, near the couch by the window. He sticks his tongue out to that direction. 

“Zetta mature. How old are you again, x<6?”

“No. I am aware that the little mermaid dies in the original, though.”

He gets a condescending cackle as a reply. “Tell me, Sho, are you always this rude?”

“I’m not rude you tasteless little tetrahedral!” The amount of raw emotion in the voice always manages to sweep over Yoshiya, like he remembers sea waves did in summers of his childhood. Surprise is a wonderful emotion, he notes. Even though he would like nothing more than to reply smugly to his ‘friend’ , he’s too scared of scaring him off. 

Yoshiya is scared of a lot of things.

Sho is not one of them.

“Where were you?”

“Why? Did you miss my zetta sexy voice?”

Figures. There’s comfortable silence as he presses eyelids shut, squeezing out lukewarm tears in an attempt to stay awake. It would bother him so if he fell asleep in his ‘presence’, like he did last time. When he speaks up again, his voice is unintentionally raspy and breaks in the second word.

“Who are you?”

“Woah no need to shut yer trap with questions or anything…”

Yoshiya remains silent, quietly protesting the given answer. He really did want to know, though.

There is a tired-sounding sigh as Sho speaks up again, but for the first time, it’s quiet, there is no cocky undertone in his voice.

“I have a sum, but I’m missing the matrices and vectors. It seems I found a mathematical problem too hard for me.”

More silence fills the room as the boy doesn’t know what to reply, and he just plays with the hem of his too big hospital pajama. After a while, he mutters an “I’m sorry.” And in return he gets an annoyed “’Sokay”.

The next time he speaks up, he gets no response. He lets his head hit the pillow not as gently, his curls spreading around his face on the pure white linen, and the moment he does so, he sees stars even though his eyes are closed. The pulsing in his temples starts and he doesn’t even notice it until it spreads to the back of his head. He hasn’t felt this empty or this abandoned in a while. After a while, he falls asleep, knowing Sho will not turn up at least for another couple of weeks after tonight.

He does, however.

Sho visits him almost every night, sometimes right before Yoshiya closes his eyes, sometimes long before he even thinks about going to sleep. All he ever does is sleep and he wants to stay up, read, or even better, talk to Sho. It’s scary how dependent to Sho he became, he reckoned that the feelings of wanting to be close, wanting to be friends were long thrown away. Yoshiya isn’t sure if this is a good or a bad thing. It’s hard between choosing whether to be dying or to not be human at all.

Sho seems to have other plans, though. He doesn’t reply to the sickly boy when questions are asked, instead addressing him on his own accord. The mathematical speech pattern is getting a little tiresome to Yoshiya, but he thinks beggars can’t be choosers. Tonight, Sho can not keep still and he paces the room in a steady algorithm of steps, brushing his fingertips over the spines of books on the small makeshift bookshelf, Yoshiya’s most prized possession, as the boy simply watches his every move, as if he was mentally taking notes of the man’s stride. Soon, Sho gets bored and decided raiding the nightstand would be a good idea. Before Yoshiya can stop him, he’s already rummaging through boxes of drugs, supposed medicine “You tell me, does this even work?” Yoshiya quickly shakes his head. “Meant to divide, can’t even subtract.” After at least another half an hour of silence broken only by noises of Sho going through the little personal belongings Yoshiya has, he finds an old medical record.

“Kiryu Yoshiya, aged sixteen, huh?”

Yoshiya’s name rolls of his tongue in an unpleasant way as he turns his head slightly to look at the boy. Yoshiya does open his mouth to reply but Sho cuts him off “I don’t like it. It makes me feel like I’m talking to some old geezer. How about I call you Yoshi? No, no, in the name of Gauss, that makes me sick. Joshua. Yeah, that’s a zetta sweet name. ‘Sides, you sorta look like a Joshua.” He sends Yoshiya a smile which makes the ends of his eyes crinkle and Yoshiya blushes a little unintentionally. By the end of the evening, Yoshiya, _Joshua, he reminds himself_ , can almost guarantee that the only reason why Sho talks is to hear his own voice.

He dreams of a city that night. Of a city bustling with people, and bright lights and neon, with cars and sounds. He hasn’t seen a city square in over two years.

He’s staring out the window the following afternoon, admiring the park he can see from his white little room. It’s now late spring and the air smells like plans for summer and fun. He’d feel sad, like he did the past two years in this time, hadn’t he decided to trade his emotions for the welcoming embrace of the expectation of death.

He sighs, and before he looks away, he sees black tattoos under golden eyes staring right at him. He turns around too quickly and the room’s lines blur for a moment. He half expects to feel his body hitting the cold tile floor. Instead he feels a warm hand wrap around his waist as Sho breathes a “Yo” in his face. They both back away at the same time and Sho smiles “I’m practically your superman nowadays, so cah toa?” “If thinking so makes you happy, dear, then I have absolutely no objections to you thinking so.” The boy turns to look at out the window again, and Sho joins him, as they stand side by side, Yoshiya can feel the skin on the back of his neck prickle. “Sho, why do you keep coming to me?” There’s a moment of uncomfortable silence between them as he feels Sho shift to cross his arms “You’re the only one who can see me so far. Plus, I like messing with you.” He gets nothing out of this reply. The game of waiting to die and wasting time talking to a living dead is starting to wear him off and he shuts the blinds on the window. “How old were you when you…..you know?” “Subtracted 1 from a 0? Multiplied with a negative?,” He rolls his eyes “Fallen down a y line straight to 0.0? I was, no I still am nineteen. It’s been a year and three months. I got hit by a car. What a grand way to go, yeah?” His voice is heavy with sarcasm. It’s one of those moments where Joshua doesn’t know what to say, so he blurts out “That’s horrible.”

Sho’s eyes widen for a millisecond “I guess, if you think of it that way. The only real problem I see is that now, I can’t redefine math anymore.” He stares emotionlessly right into Joshua’s eyes “Are you afraid, Joshua? Does dying scare you?” Yoshiya shifts a little under his gaze “No.,” he lies “It just takes forever.” The tension in the room is growing and it’s unknown how it got there or where it leads. “To die is easy. All you have to do is take more of these,” he passes the distance between the ledge of the window and the nightstand to obtain a few boxes of pills “with some of these. Easy as 1, 2, 3.”

Joshua stares at the pills offered to him, looks up at Sho’s cold face, and then back at the pills. This is becoming messy and he feels forced to say or do something, anything at this point. He never gets the chance, though, because Sho leans into his personal space “You don’t really want to die. You don’t even know what you want, you hectopascal.” Sho’s already feral pupils become a thin line. Yoshiya closes his eyes, inhales through his nose and he can smell something like sandalwood. When he opens his eyes again, Sho is gone.

That night he hardly manages to sleep at all, and the city from last night is now completely empty. It’s strange yet intriguing, and Yoshiya can’t help but feel like he should be aware of shadows lurking.

When he wakes up from his still dream, it’s barely past 6 AM, and he spends the rest of the morning watching the sky turn from indigo, over light purple, to light blue with a few puffy clouds sprinkled here and there. He doesn’t even respond to the nurses coming to check up on him. The rest of the day is spent in silent sulking over absolutely nothing. It’s part of the dying process.

9 days later, the doctor tells him, after double checking his medical records, that he’s better. The information causes no emotion whatsoever in Joshua. It just means his body will struggle longer. He does, however, agree to the offer of having one of the nurses take him on an hour walk around the park. He silently mocks the “walk” part, as he knows he’ll end up in the wheelchair before he even leaves this room. The outside is still a mystery though, and he’s had enough of this room, so he accepts.

The park is full of life, with flowers in full bloom, and children running around in the playground. Yoshiya can’t stop his smile as he soaks up the sunlight and the warm breeze. The nurse tries to keep the small talk and this time, he’s too influenced by the pure life around him to turn her down, so he tells her how he heard that the old lady from two rooms down tried to smuggle her cat into the hospital and how the doctor nearly had a heart attack when he hear meowing from the closet when he came for a nightly check up. She laughs and he laughs with her. In return, she narrates the story of how one of her friends decided to dye her hair red but it came out as pink, and as she was walking to the hairdresser’s to fix it, she got an offer to model for a clothing company due to her “hot pink, extraordinary hair”. The last few lines of her story tumble out with laughter and he giggles. They’re crossing a wooden bridge over a small pond, and she points to the ducks swimming around freely as his gaze wanders to his hospital room window. Any and all traces of a good mood he had acquired today leave his body at once as he spots Sho staring right at them, lips pressed together in a thin line, eyes glaring.

Yoshiya tells the nurse he isn’t feeling well and that he wants to go back, much to her disappointment.

Tonight, the city is empty again except, instead of being a bystander, Joshua is now standing in the middle of the same bridge he visited today. To his surprise, he’s wearing a dress suit and his hair is tied back. The ducks have been replaced with see through swans and he loses himself for a period of time, just looking at them, their bodies cutting through the surface of the water soundlessly. His breath hitches when he hears footsteps right next to him, and Sho is standing to his left. His ashen hair has been gelled carefully out of his face, and he’s also dressed in a fancy suit, with the exception of having a tailcoat instead of a tuxedo jacket like Joshua’s.

“Your dreams are zetta messed up, man.” He hears Sho breathe out a laugh through his nose.

“Then why are you here?” Joshua asks tentatively, putting his forearms on the wooden railing so he could observe the ghastly creatures swimming. “Well, please excuse my dear aunt Sally, but you conjured me here.” “I do not conjure you up willingly, Sho. I don’t want you, so you can go back to being mad at me.” A tired sigh escapes Sho’s lips as he presses his lower back to the railing, his hips almost touching Joshua’s elbows. “I wasn’t mad at you. I can’t get mad over the fact you want to stay alive as long as possible. It’s only human to do so.” Yoshiya opts to not respond, it’s not like he has anything smart to say anyway. He starts thinking that the rest of this dream will be uneventful and silent but then Sho speaks up again “This is my first time wearing a suit” Joshua looks up at his face and Sho responds with a sideway glance “Mine too. I’m not entirely sure if I’m sad or happy over this fact so…” His voice trails off as his eyes defocus, mind distant. Sho runs fingertips over Yoshiya’s forearms, up his elbows, to his shoulder. Joshua freezes when he feels a finger brush on the corner of his lips, and ends up caressing his cheek. Sho’s quiet, deep laughter is the only thing he hears before he sits upright in his dark room, bangs sticking to his sweaty forehead. Sho is not visible but his presence is obvious.

The next morning, the nurse adds new medication to the mixture that is almost constantly connected to his forearm via a quite long needle. She tells him how they’ll going to help him sleep. Yoshiya couldn’t care less, and is already starting to tune her voice out when he hears her mouth an all too familiar name.

He turns to look at her as she goes on “What did you just say? About Sho?” There is something almost sadistic in the way she looks back at him “I said that your hallucinations of this ‘Sho’ should stop now. They’ve been worrying us lately.” He wants to rip the needle right out of his skin now, but chooses not to. There’s no point in struggling. He ignores the rest of her monologue in favor of looking out the window.

He flinches only when he feels the heavy footsteps walking around the corner of the hallway and the door slams open “Honey, I’m home!” Sho’s baritone cuts through the air. His grin slowly drips off his face as he catches Joshua’s confused look “You aren’t supposed to be here. They said the drugs-“ “I told you, Joshua. I’m not a byproduct of your mind. You’re just the only one who can see me. The plus to my minus, and all that jazz.” Yoshiya tears up “Does that mean you’ll stay?” Sho sits on the side of his bed “Of course I’ll stay. I need you just as much as you need me.” He takes Joshua’s small hand into his own and studies it for a while. Then he interlaces their fingers, right before Joshua falls asleep.

It’s already July and Joshua can feel he doesn’t have much left. He doesn’t eat much, he doesn’t sleep much. The dark circles under his eyes are now ominous, and a constant part of his everyday look. His skin is even paler, almost ghastly and looks almost like it’s glowing in comparison to Sho’s tan when the older boy engulfs the smaller palm in his own. Sho is now a constant in his life. Even though Joshua loses conscience more often than ever before, he doesn’t think Sho leaves at all. Deep down, he’s grateful for the company, as supernatural as it is. Sometimes he falls asleep to Sho’s footsteps as the older male paces around the room, lost in thought, and wakes up to find Sho looking out the window; other times he passes out while Sho is solving a crossword in the newspaper he stole from the waiting room and when he wakes up, the other boy is laying next to him. His dreams have already become nothing but infinite blackness, his sleep not much more than a drug induced stupor. Dying is a heavy process.

It’s a stormy afternoon, with wind blowing ferociously outside as thunder growls in the distance. Yoshiya is sitting cross-legged on his bed, with Sho sprawled out on his back next to him. He’s re-reading Grimm’s fairytales as Sho brushes fingertips over his clothed back. “Sho?” Yoshiya offers. “Hmm?” The other’s answer seems lazy and Joshua knows that Sho’s face is expressionless again, eyes concentrated on his pale back. “Why don’t you ever do math?” “I died. Math was my hobby during living days, otherwise it would all be a sum of boredom, and waste of time.” When Joshua doesn’t answer, he sighs out “A lot of things change for you when you die.” He continues to draw the outline of the pale boy’s spine as Yoshiya looks at him over his shoulder “Will you still be here?” Sho’s gaze moves from Yoshiya’s back to his tired eyes. “Definitely.” They both go silent after that, and later on, Joshua falls asleep with his head on Sho’s shoulder.

The beginning of August is hot and stuffy and Joshua doesn’t leave his room even once. He spends a lot of time reading, or just sleeping with eyes wide open. Sometimes he’s not too sure what is ‘asleep’ and what is ‘awake’. Sho still isn’t leaving his side.

A week later Joshua can’t even get up anymore, his legs too weak to support his incredibly skinny body. He just lays there, the cover thrown off of his bed due to incredible heat of summer. He remembers enjoying being hot. Now he’s cold, he’s always cold. Sho’s fingers are running across his ribs, over his arms, across his cheeks. The older male’s skin is incredibly warm, and Yoshiya thinks he’s grateful.

On August 21th he wakes up with his nose buried in Sho’s neck, right above his collarbone. He inhales and he can smell the phantom scent of sandalwood. With moderate difficulty, he brings his free arm up and drapes it over the other’s waist. He’s not sure if he’s awake or dreaming when he feels a warm hand sliding across his hip, down to his lower back to press him into a warm body closer. Amidst hazy thoughts, he regrets not having enough time for enjoying moments like this.

On August 23rd he doesn’t wake up at all. The doctors are running in and out of his room and a lot of mechanical appliances are brought in. The needle in his arm is now starting to sting and he opens his eyes to see Sho looking down at him. “It’s time.” There’s no more postponing now and he breathes in deeply through his mouth. Sho looks over Yoshiya’s shoulder and his eyebrows furrow. After a moment that seems like forever, he looks back at Yoshiya. “Joshua, I…” and he doesn’t have to say any more, because Joshua has long awaited to hear the unspoken words. There’s an uncomfortable tug as the medication attempts to wake him up, pulling his hand from Sho’s. He’ll have none of that, though. “I’m ready” he nods. “You sure? There’s no subtracting once you add this monomer.” The little hesitation that was beginning to harbor in his fogged up mind was abruptly slaughtered by another tug, this time in a form of two electrical pressure points on his chest, making Sho back away. “Positive. I want to…I want-“ Yoshiya is unsure of what he wants at this point. Then he remembers that the only thing he wants, he undoubtedly needs. “You, I want you.” He mentally praises himself for the determination in his voice, and shudders when he feels Sho’s hands on his back, as he pulls the smaller boy closer. There is nothing left to say, not really and Sho looks into Joshua’s eyes briefly. Then, he closes the small distance between them as he presses their lips together. Yoshiya’s eyes close slowly. Dying is a process of life. His life begins as it ends.

The machine lets out an elongated beep as the straight line erases the cascading ones.

_Kiryu Yoshiya, aged 16, time of death 16:11, August 23rd._


End file.
